For Andrea Correale, “crisis mode doesn’t mean sitting around and crying.” The founder and president of Elegant Affairs Catering was watching her business evaporate as weddings, parties and corporate gatherings were first discouraged and then outright forbidden.
And so she considered the two sides of her business, clients and suppliers, and came up with a plan to help both of them.
Clients are staying home, she figured, and they need groceries for cooking, and family-style meals for when they can’t cook. Meanwhile, her food suppliers were no longer supplying restaurants.
“I started to call my purveyors,” she said, “and I asked them to tell me what provisions they had that were not in huge gallon pails.” That was the genesis of Elegant Affairs’ “Grocery and Dinner Delivery” service, which launched three weeks ago.
Over the course of 48 hours, Correale built a website that offers about 150 grocery items and homestyle dinners. She delivers all over Long Island.
“Grocery to go” stocks about 150 items, from almond milk and apples to chicken breasts and Chips Ahoy cookies. There are garbage bags and Gatorade, romaine lettuce and rack of lamb, canned tuna and, yes, toilet paper. For now, there’s even hand sanitizer. (Wine, beer and liquor are also available, but, per state law, must accompany an order of prepared food.)
She also noted that many clients were getting “tired of takeout. It’s a pain to arrange every day,” she said, “and a lot of people were looking for a meal that was healthier and homier.” That was the inspiration behind what she calls “the dining club”: Four days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday), her fleet of trucks deliver four-course, heat-and serve meals for $25 per person.
Wednesday, April 15, for example, it’s “Pacific rim” prime steak in a soy-ginger-garlic sauce, accompanied by cucumber salad with sesame miso, garlicky bok choy and bell-pepper brown-rice pilaf, plus dessert. There’s a two-person minimum. Order for the week (four meals) and get a free bottle of wine.
Elegant Affairs’ stock in grade is lavish events on Long Island’s Gold Coast, the Hamptons and Manhattan, and Correale has no idea when such gatherings might resume. For now she’s less concerned with revenue than with keeping her staff busy and employed.
Orders for either groceries or dinners are being taken at elegant-affairs-caterers.myshopify.com and need at least 48 hours to be delivered or picked up at Elegant Affairs’ commissary kitchen at 110 Glen Cove Ave., Glen Cove, (516) 271-1619.
